After spending a week in the hospital with acute alcoholic hepatitis, and strapped to a bed for 3 days because of DT's, I still decided to go out one last time. That time I was driving one minute and on my back in the hospital hours later, in a neck brace and about to be airlifted to a head trauma unit in another hospital. Even that wasn't enough. When I got back home from the hospital, I saw my half empty bottle of vodka on the kitchen counter right where I'd left it. I didn't hesitate for a second to do what I'd always done. It was then that it hit me how insane I was. I had a broken neck, couldn't see out of my left eye, I had no car, no job, couldn't see or communicate with my children, and what's the first thing I reached for? The very thing that caused all the trouble to begin with. I poured the rest of the bottle down the drain and haven't touched it since. That was 4/16/2015.
My point is that the nature of this illness is such that we frequently forget, or ignore, the pain it causes us until it's too late. We keep pushing our luck. When we pour the alcohol into our system, it's even easier to forget it because that's a big part of what alcohol does. I've met many who were at death's door due to liver failure/cirrhosis. Sometimes they make it, sometimes they don't. I lost a former girlfriend to liver cirrhosis when she was only 38. It really is a long, ugly, painful way to go.